iPHACTORY: Interdisciplinary study of photosynthetic glandular trichomes as metabolic cell factories

高等植物为了提高自身的环境适应性，获得了各种保护机制。对抗生物攻击的一种策略涉及生产许多专门的代谢物，用于直接或间接的植物防御。在这种情况下，腺毛在植物生存中扮演着重要的角色。它们位于植物地上部分的表面，产生、储存和分泌大量不同化学成分的化合物。由于极高的代谢通量，一些细胞的产量甚至可以达到叶片干重的20%，使腺毛有资格成为真正的代谢细胞工厂。其中许多代谢物除了具有抗真菌、杀虫剂或杀虫剂的特性外，还具有重要的商业价值，近年来在毛状体生物学领域引起了越来越多的关注。尽管进行了多学科的研究，但有关腺毛运行的生物能量学的一些问题仍然没有得到回答。我们对调节代谢物产生的因素的认识差距要求进行基础研究，调查通过各种已知的、尚待阐明的前体途径的通量分布。我们的目标是发现如何有效地生产专门的代谢物，以及在植物腺毛中维持如此高的代谢通量的碳和能量供应的来源是什么。我们将通过应用跨学科的方法来实现这一点，将来自多组学实验的知识与数学建模和计算分析相结合。作为模式系统，我们将研究番茄的光合作用活性毛状体。该系统的环境和遗传扰动将为维持代谢生产力提供更多的洞察力，调查C4-光合作用类网络的可能参与。该项目产生的数学模型将成为在植物和其他生物中开发创新的代谢工程战略的基础，以生产最多样化的次生代谢物：萜类化合物。

Higher plants acquired various protective mechanisms in order to increase their environmental fitness. One strategy against biotic attacks involves the production of numerous specialised metabolites for direct or indirect plant defence. In this context, glandular trichomes play an important role in plants survival. Localised on the surface of the aerial parts of plants, they produce, store and secrete high amounts of a wide range of chemically diverse compounds. Due to extremely high metabolic fluxes, production of some can reach even up to 20% of the leaf dry weight, qualifying glandular trichomes as true metabolic cell factories. Many of these metabolites, besides exhibiting antifungal, insecticide or pesticide properties, are of a commercial importance, leading to an increased attention in trichome biology in recent years. Despite multidisciplinary research efforts, a number of questions regarding the bioenergetics of the operation of glandular trichomes remain unanswered. Our gap-in-knowledge on factors regulating the production of metabolites calls for a fundamental research investigating flux distribution through various known and yet, to be elucidated, precursor pathways. We aim to discover how the efficient production of specialised metabolites is reached and what are the origins of carbon and energy supply that maintain such extremely high metabolic fluxes in plant glandular trichomes. We will achieve that by applying an interdisciplinary approach, integrating knowledge from multi-omics experiments with mathematical modelling and computational analyses. As a model system, we will work on photosynthetically active trichomes of tomato. Environmental and genetic perturbations of the system will provide additional insight on the maintenance of the metabolic productivity investigating the possible involvement of a C4-photosynthesis-like network. The mathematical models generated by this project will form the basis for the development of innovative metabolic engineering strategies in plants and other organisms for the production of the most diverse class of secondary metabolites: terpenoids.